A blog for Small Business Consultants and the vendors who serve them. It contains Opinions on business success, News in the SMB consulting space, and Information on what I'm up to.All material Copyright (c) 2006-2019 by Karl W. Palachuk unless otherwise noted.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Bend Over, California Employers, Your State Government is at Work Again

Employees might not know what all the alphabet soup stuff stands for on their paychecks, but their employers should.

One of the taxes employers pay is Unemployment Tax. This is basically a STATE program. So why do we pay Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)? Well, that's to pay for the administration of the unemployment system. But there's an extra amount of tax thrown into FUTA to provide a government-based "insurance" program to make sure the states can't go broke.

It's kind of like the Federal Deposit Insurance program.

So California gave out more unemployment payments than they had money to pay for. Since we have the most screwed-up state legislature in the world, and a series of horrible governors that goes back three generations, this state simply pays for things with no plan to pay them back.

Well, the feds have a plan. They loan the money to the state unemployment department. And when the money is not paid back, employers get an extra bill from the Feds.

Assuming the State of California continues to be completely irresponsible next year and the year after, you can expect an additional .3% increase in FUTA rates until the State has a system to pay their bills.

- - - - -

PLEASE remember, on election day to Vote Against All Incumbents. I know you think your Assemblyman, your Senator, and your local elected officials are the exception to the rule. But they're not. The people who got us in this mess are NOT going to get us out.
I
am NOT opposed to taxes. I'm not one of those people who thinks every tax is too high and the government shouldn't do anything. Far from it. I enjoy clean drinking water and safe roads as much as the next guy. But I *AM* opposed to completely irresponsible elected officials.

At the end of the day, we don't send people into government so they can help us screw our fellow citizens by taking more than we give. We only ask elected officials to do one simple thing: Balance the services we can afford with the taxes we pay. If you don't have the money, either cut the services or increase the taxes. Those are hard decisions. But instead, we have hundreds of elected officials who can't make ANY decisions except to put off the hard decisions until after the next election.

Vote them all out. ALL OF THEM.

No one could do a worse job than the people who have been running this state for the last 30 years.

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I make every attempt to honestly state what I believe and enjoy the freedom of posting whatever I feel like on this blog. This is a big complicated world and I have many interconnected personal and professional relationships.

I may in some way receive money or other benefits from any of the products, services, or companies mentioned in this blog as a direct or indirect result of my actions on and off this blog. Any experience mentioned here is just my experience and I have no knowledge about whether it represents a typical experience with any products, services, or companies mentioned.

Whenever it is possible to have both an honest and a misleading interpretation of my statements, please assume honesty. Thanks. - karlp